Google has announced enhancements to its neural machine translation (NMT) technology, allowing it to run Google Translate applications offline, on users' devices. The technology will allow users to 'get high-quality translations' even when they are not connected to the Internet. The artificial intelligence (AI) system that powers it allows the translation of 'whole sentences at a time', and it 'uses broader content to help determine the most relevant translation, which it then rearranges and adjusts to sound more like a real person speaking with proper grammar'. To use the new technology, users will have to download language sets on their devices, and Google explains that each such set is around 35-35MB. The tool is to be made available in 59 languages.

Microsoft researchers announced that they have created what they believe to be 'the first machine translation system that can translate sentences of news articles from Chinese to English with the same quality and accuracy as a person'. To develop this translation system, the researchers used several methods of training artificial intelligence (AI) systems: dual learning, deliberation networks, joint training, and agreement regularisation. Microsoft's translation system, explained in details in a research paper, achieved the so-called human parity on a commonly used dataset of news stories – newstest2017. The translation results were compared with two independently produced human reference translations, and the comparison showed that the machine translation results were accurate and on par with the translations carried out by humans. While the researchers are enthusiastic about achieving the human parity milestone on the dataset, they cautioned, that the achievement does not mean that machine translation is a solved problem. Challenges remain, and the translation system needs to be tested on real-time news stories.

Jon Henley from The Guardian reports that 'Iceland’s mother tongue and cultural identity is drowning in an online ocean of English'. Henley notes that Icelandic is spoken only by some 340,000 people, and it doesn't import words for new phenomena, rather, new words are drawn from the Norse vocabulary, so they look and sound like Icelandic. This retains a pure language that adapts to today's technology, even if, as he notes, Siri and Alexa don't understand them. But since the online world which is now a large part of daily life, speaks English, and not much Icelandic, children especially are not building the necessary base in their native tongue. 'English may not be the enemy – in principle, multilingualism is obviously a good thing – but its sheer weight and variety online are overwhelming, said Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson, a professor of Icelandic language and linguistics at the University of Iceland, and member of an ongoing research study on the topic. Icelandic is not alone in this situation: As many as 21 European languages are potentially at risk of 'digital extinction', according to research from the Multilingual Europe Technology Alliance (META).

Microsoft has announced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Neural Networks to improve real-time language machine translation for Hindi, Bengali and Tamil languages, notably for India. This will produce more accurate results for users while surfing the Internet, across different browsers and applications. Complexities in achieving these results included the number of Indic languages and the lack of content in local languages. Bhashaindia.com provides links to this and other and other computing tools for Indic languages.

Multilingualism is an important aspect of the promotion and development of cultural diversity on the Internet. If the Internet is to be used by all within society, content needs to be accessible in more languages. A report released by the UN Broadband Commission in 2015 reveals that only about 5% of the world's estimated 7100 languages are currently represented on the internet. It also notes that the use of the Latin script remains a challenge for many Internet users, in particular for reading domain names.

Multilingualism is strongly related to local content. Having more languages on the internet means that more locally relevant content is being made available. If online content is provided in local languages (by governments, companies, etc.), this gives people incentives to get online, as ‘users’ of content. At the same time, allowing people to express themselves online in their own languages encourages them to become generators of content. As such, the availability of local content can contribute to making the internet more inclusive and to bridge the digital divide, through its potential to attract more people online, both as users and generators of content.

Updates in multilingual content on the Internet may now come from multilingual content marketing as business moves to incorporate new audiences. In addition, e-commerce and other applications are moving to multilingual interfaces to reach users in multicultural and multilingual populations like India. The problem with English points out that ‘Foreign countries are opaque to mostly monolingual Britons and Americans. Foreigners know us much better than we know them’, and suggests that this language asymmetry probably hurts English speaking countries in many ways, including communications; lost access to information in other languages; and even difficulty in fighting cybercrime and hacking.

The promotion of multilingualism requires technical standards that facilitate the use of non-Latin alphabets. One of the early initiatives related to the multilingual use of computers was undertaken by the Unicode Consortium – a non-profit institution that develops standards to facilitate the use of character sets for different languages.

In their turn, ICANN and the IETF took an important step in promoting Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs). IDNs facilitate the use of domain names written in non-Latin alphabets such as Chinese, Arabic, Cyrillic and others. As of January 2015, IDNs have been introduced in several countries and territories as equivalent to their Latin country code top level domains (ccTLDs). For example, in China, 中国 has been introduced in addition to .cn, while in Russia, рф has been introduced in addition to .ru. IDN are also part of ICANN’s New gTLD Programme, allowing for the registration of new top level domains (gTLDs) in scripts other than the Latin one; for example, .сайт (website) and .онлайн (online) are among the new top level domains available to the public.

IDNs thus contribute to making the Internet more inclusive, as the possibility of accessing and registering domain names in more languages and scripts empower more people to use the Internet. It has been said numerous times that domain names are not only about addressing and naming, but also about content; they are therefore relevant for local communities, and they have the potential of encouraging both the use and the development of local content, in local languages and scripts.

Many efforts have been also made to improve machine translation. Given its policy of translating all official activities into the languages of all member states, the EU has supported various development activities in the field of machine translation. Although major breakthroughs have been made, limitations remain. In the case of IDNs, for example, universal acceptance is still a challenge when it comes to issues such as functional IDN e-mails and recognition of IDN by search engines.

The promotion of multilingualism requires appropriate governance frameworks. The first element of governance regimes has been provided by organisations such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), which has instigated many initiatives focusing on multilingualism, including the adoption of important documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity.

Another key promoter of multilingualism is the EU, since it embodies multilingualism as one of its basic political and working principles. The evolution and wide usage of Web 2.0 tools, allowing ordinary users to become contributors and content developers, offers an opportunity for greater availability of local content in a wide variety of languages. Nevertheless, without a wider framework for the promotion of multilingualism, the opportunity might end up creating an even wider gap, since users feel the pressure of using the common language in order to reach a broader audience.

Actors

UNESCO facilitates global advocacy and discussions on freedom of expression and relevant issues including privacy at the WSIS and the Internet Governance Forum. It further explores freedom of expression online in-depth through its flagship publication of Internet Freedom. UNESCO also defines key indicators to help stakeholders assess the local situation. Media development indicators are an analytic tool designed to assess the state of the media and measure the impact of media development programmes. Internet Universality Indicators aims to build a framework of indicators through which to assess levels of achievement, in individual countries and internationally, on four fundamental principles: human rights, openness, accessibility and multistakeholderism.

ICANN has championed efforts in the area of multilingualism by supporting access to multilingual onl

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ICANN has championed efforts in the area of multilingualism by supporting access to multilingual online content by the use of Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) IDNs enable people around the world to use domain names in local scripts (not only Latin, but also Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, etc). ICANN has a dedicated programme to assist in the development and promotion of a multilingual Internet using these IDNs. The programme is primarily focused on the planning and implementation of IDN top-level domains (TLDs), including IDN country code TLDs and generic TLDs. In addition, the ICANN community is working on addressing problems related to the universal acceptance of IDNs.

The ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) develops international standards (called recommendations) covering information and communications technologies. Standards are developed on a consensus-based approach, by study groups composed of representatives of ITU members (both member states and companies). These groups focus on a wide range of topics: operational issues, economic and policy issues, broadband networks, Internet protocol based networks, future networks and cloud computing, multimedia, security, the Internet of Things and smart cities, and performance and quality of service. The World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA), held every four years, defines the next period of study for the ITU-T.

Over-the-top services, next generation networks, the collaborative economy, and artificial intelligence are am

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Over-the-top services, next generation networks, the collaborative economy, and artificial intelligence are among the issues the European Commission is paying particular attention to. The Electronic Communications Code proposed by the Commission in September 2016 plans to introduce some level of regulation for OTT services. Encouraging the deployment of NGN networks able to better support the provision of converged services is a priority for the Commission, as part of its Broadband Strategy and Policy. The EU executive body has also issued guidelines and policy recommendations for the collaborative economy, while its Digitising European Industry strategy identified artificial intelligence and robotics are cornerstone technologies to be supported.

IFLA, as a worldwide organisation deals with many languages including Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German

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IFLA, as a worldwide organisation deals with many languages including Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Russian and Spanish. IFLA launched multilingual version of its website on 25 February 2013. IFLA language centers, regional offices and individual IFLA members take care of translating the organisationâs documentation and web contents. Having the content of IFLAâs website available in as many languages as possible, helps to reduce the language barriers and gaps in relation to IFLAâs work. IFLAâs multilingual working group is in charge of spearheading multilingual initiatives of the organisation.

Instruments

Resolutions & Declarations

The second World Internet Conference (WIC) - the Wuzhen Summit was held on 16-18 December 2015 with the theme 'An Interconnected World Shared and Governed by All'. Pursuant to discussions at the High-Level Advisory Council (HAC), the WIC Organising Committee proposed an Initiative outlining the following issues: promotion of Internet deployment and development, fostering cultural diversity in the cyberspace, sharing the fruits of Internet development, ensuring peace and security in cyberspace, and improving the global Internet governance.

As the Internet evolved and became more and more used at a global level, it became obvious that efforts need to be put in bringing cultural diversity and multilingualism on this ’network of networks'. Many stakeholders, including governments, have stressed out that, in order for more people to be able to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the Internet, they need to be able to use this resource in their own languages and their own scripts.

In 2002, the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference adopted Resolution 133 on the 'Role of administrations of Member States in the management of internationalized (multilingual) domain names’, which was lastly amended in 2014. The resolution emphasises the fact that, although progress has been made in ensuring that the Internet is reflecting 'the diverse and growing language needs of all users’, there is still much that remains to be done. It is also underlined that, as domain names expand to include non-Latin character sets, it is essential to maintain the global interoperability of the Internet. Through this resolution, the ITU Secretary General and the Directors of ITU’s Bureaus are instructed to actively participate in international initiatives concerning the deployment and management of IDNs, as well as to encourage ITU member states to develop and deploy IDNs in their own scripts. ITU member states and sector members are also invited to take part in international discussions and initiatives related to the development of IDNs, as well as to urge all entities working in this area to expedite their activities.

Resolution 133 was followed by another ITU resolution on IDNs (Resolution 48), which was adopted in 2004 by the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly. Through this new resolution, the ITU-D Study Group 17 was instructed to study IDNs and to cooperate with appropriate entities in this area. In the study period 2005-2008, the study group looked at issues such as: national, regional, and international experiences of ITU member states, sector members, and other relevant entities in the field of IDN; the IDN needs of ITU members and modalities for addressing them; and possible telecommunication network standardisation activities that might be required with regards to IDN.

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) have for long been described as key tools in achieving growth and development, on an economic, social, cultural, and political level. The continuous innovation in this area has led to the development of ICT applications that are now used not only as means of communications, but also in various fields such as e-commerce, e-government, e-health, etc.

The role of ICTs as instruments for achieving sustainable development at a global level has been recognised by various intergovernmental organisations, which have many times stressed the need to ensure that such technologies are globally accessible and can effectively be used to fulfill their developmental potential.

The Resolution emphasises the fact that ICTs can bring about significant political, economic, and social changes, and draws attention to the fact that more efforts need to be made in order to overcome the financial, economic, and social restrictions and barriers that hinder the use of ICTs in developing societies. A list of recommendations for parliaments and governments are then outlined. Parliaments are called on to make full use of ICTs to enhance the effectiveness, efficiency, and transparency of their activities, and better communicate with the citizens. They are also asked to take legislative actions aimed at creating an enabling environment for the dissemination, development, and secure use of ICTs. Governments, on the other hand, are urged to take measures for bridging the digital divide, in its various dimensions (including with regard to affordability of access, digital literacy, and gender equality). The Resolution also addresses the use of ICTs for criminal purposes, and it calls for enhanced national efforts and international cooperation in preventing and combating this phenomenon. The role of ICTs in facilitating the exercise and defence of human rights is outlined as well, and freedom of expression in cyberspace is reaffirmed as a key principle that needs to be respected.

As a follow-up to the adoption of this Resolution, the IPU and its member states have engaged in a number of activities aimed at promoting an enhanced use of ICTs as tools for development. As mandated by the Resolution, the IPU was involved in the 2003-2005 phases of the World Summit on the Information Society, and it was later designated as a co-facilitator for the WSIS Action Line C1 on ‘The role of public authorities and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICT for development’. In 2005, the Union set up a Global Centre on ICT in Parliament (in partnership with the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs); one of the main objectives of this centre is to 'reinforce the role of parliaments in establishing the legislative frameworks required for the development of sustainable ICT policies and an inclusive information society’. The ‘World e-Parliament Report’ is another IPU activity worthwhile mentioning; the report look at the progress make by parliaments in using ICTs for exercising their constitutional functions.

Following a United Nations General Assembly resolution adopted in December 2001 (Resolution 56/183), a World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was launched, with the aim to contribute to the development of a unitary global vision on an inclusive and development-oriented information society. The summit was held in two phases: the first phase took place in Geneva, from 10 to 12 December 2003, and the second phase took place in Tunis, from 16 to 18 November 2005. Although a UN summit, WSIS was not limited to governmental participation, but it also welcomed representatives of the private sector, the technical community, and the civil society.

The Tunis Agenda is one of the two final documents adopted at the conclusion of the second phase of WSIS. The document contains provisions on: financial mechanisms for bridging the digital divide, Internet governance and related issues, and the implementation and follow-up of the WSIS outcomes.

One of the main characteristics of the Agenda is that it deals extensively with the concept of Internet governance (IG). Firstly, it provides a working definition of Internet governance, as proposed by the Working Group on Internet Governance: 'the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet’. This definition outlines two key principles that are also separately underlined in the document: that Internet governance encompasses not only technical issues related to the management of the Internet technical resources (names and addresses), but also public policy issues; and that the various stakeholders (private sector, civil society, the academic and technical communities) have roles and responsibilities in Internet governance.

Secondly, the Agenda lays the foundations for the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), created a forum for multistakeholder dialogue on public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance (such as cybersecurity, cybercrime, spam, freedom of expression, privacy and data protection, digital divide, multilingualism). In addition, it introduces the concept of ‘enhanced cooperation’, aimed to enable governments to carry out their roles and responsibilities in international public policy issue pertaining to the Internet, and called for the launch of a ‘process towards enhanced cooperation’.

Although the Tunis Agenda is not a legally binding instrument, it outlines a series of recommendations regarding the implementation of the WSIS objectives and action lines at national, regional, and international level. Some of these include: building national e-strategies as part of the broader national development plans, using bilateral and multilateral technical assistance programmes, involving UN regional commissions and UN agencies in the implementation process, and the participation of all stakeholders in the implementation activities. An overall review of the implementation of WSIS outcomes was also called for 2015.

The Agenda was endorsed by the UN General Assembly through its Resolution 60/252 from April 2006.

Activities undertaken as part of the follow-up and review of the implementation of WSIS outcomes include: the designation of facilitators and co-facilitators of WSIS action lines (mostly UN agencies), the creation of the UN Group on the Information Society (tasked with facilitating the implementation of the WSIS outcomes), meetings on the action line facilitators, the WSIS Forums (held annually since 2009).

In December 2015, a UN General Assembly High Level Meeting was held in New York, and it was dedicated to an overall review of the implementation of the WSIS outcomes, as required by the Tunis Agenda. The meeting concluded with the adoption of an inter-governmentally agreed outcome document which, among others, reaffirmed the commitments set out in the Tunis Agenda, acknowledged progress made over the previous 10 years, and called for more efforts in bridging the digital divide and strengthening the information society. A new high-level meeting on the overall review of the implementation of the WSIS outcomes is planned for 2025, and it is aimed to take stock of progress and identify both areas of continued focus and challenges.

Publications

The latest edition of glossary, compiled by DiploFoundation, contains explanations of over 130 acronyms, initialisms, and abbreviations used in IG parlance. In addition to the complete term, most entries include a concise explanation and a link for further information.

The book, now in its sixth edition, provides a comprehensive overview of the main issues and actors in the field of Internet governance and digital policy through a practical framework for analysis, discussion, and resolution of significant issues. It has been translated into many languages.

The report provides an analysis of why Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) are a driver of multilingualism, considers aspects related to universal acceptance of IDNs, and presents IDN-related facts and figures.

This document, produced as part of the Internet Governance Forum 2014, addresses the ways in which an enabling environment can be created for the development of local content, using examples of best practices from different countries.

This report presents quantitative data on the deployment of IDNs to date and looks at the deployment experiences of IDN ccTLDs in selected regions, exploring opportunities and challenges for IDN deployment going forward.

Moving forward, he explained the very concept of universal acceptance. He said that today there is a huge debate on whether the Internet is reaching everyone and whether everyone has the same possibilities when using it, given the differences in language, characters, and writing systems. Therefore, universal acceptance is not only a problem of internationalised domain names (IDNs) and domain names, but also that of search engines, e-mail address internationalisation, and similar issues that we might miss from this conversation.

The first panellist, Mr Patrik Fältström (Chair, Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC)), started his presentation by trying to elaborate on what is the actual problem that was discussed. Everything started with the question of how to bring more people online. In order to do so, we need to enable people to communicate, and that means to create and share audio, video and text. It is really important to enable people to enter information in their own language, which requires good script and character support in all applications. Also, providing people with the possibility to translate and transform information with the help of text to speech or speech to text, and to use it in multiple languages, would contribute to higher participation. This would be of great help to people with disabilities.Hence, among all discussions about domain names, search engines and other issues, we should not forget this bigger picture when we speak about universal acceptance.

The next panellist,Mr Dušan Stojičević (Marketing Director for Eastern Europe, Gransy) stated that the problem is not with standards, but rather the lack of implementation of standards. From his professional experience, he stated that the number of people who are interested in using Cyrillic domain names is still very low. In addition, there is also the fact that there are insufficient financial resources for the registries and registrars to invest in IDNs. In the end, he still thinks that the biggest challenge is in people’s habits and the fact that people are used to standard keyboards and scripts. Hence, there is no significant demand for these in local languages.

The discussion continued with questions from the participants. Once more, the problem of implementing standards that have been in place for a long time, was emphasised. Representatives from Georgia stated that they have a very low number of people using IDNs. Moreover, given the current technical issues with the implementation of standards and scripts that some of the participants raised, it is evident that this problem requires more patience and work. the session was concluded with the thought that we might have a ’chicken and egg’ due to the lack of deployment in the practice. In the end, we should have in mind that preserving diversity on Internet is what makes it open and this is why IDNs are important.

IGF 2015

IGF 2016 Report

The need to foster cultural diversity and multilingualism on the Internet emerged in many sessions at IGF 2016. For the Internet to enable inclusive and sustainable growth, it is essen- tial that Internet users be able to create and access content, and have software tools in their own languages and scripts (Enhancing Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Cyberspace - WS19). Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) can contribute to a more diverse cyberspace, but problems related to universal acceptance (e-mail addresses in non-Latin scripts, recognition of IDNs by search engines) still need to be addressed (Enabling Every User with a Unique Internet Culture ID - WS144).

Moreover, countries need to develop favourable and dynamic policies to encourage and protect local content. Infrastructure and access to digital tools are also necessary to support both the devel- opment of and access to local content (Local content and sustainable growth - WS22).

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